Paul Mariéton.
CHAPTER XXI
LES BAUX
In all Provence, perhaps in all Europe, there is no more astonishing relic of mediæval life than that "crater of a feudal volcano" Les Baux,[21] a veritable eagle's nest of a city in one of the wildest and highest points of the Alpilles. It is a morning's drive from St. Remy across the little range to its steep southern side.
We plunge straight into their heart and begin to mount by gradual windings through little valleys, arid and lonely. Dwarf oak, lavender and rosemary make their only covering. But for their grey vesture one might imagine oneself in some valley of the moon, wandering dream-bound in a dead world. The limestone vales have something of the character of the lunar landscape: a look of death succeeding violent and frenzied life, which gives to the airless, riverless valleys of our satellite their unbearable desolation. It might have been fancy, but it seemed that in the Alpilles there was not a living thing; neither beast nor bird nor insect.
As we ascended, the landscape grew stranger and more tragic. The walls of rock closed in upon us, then fell back, breaking up into chasms, crags, pinnacles. The lavender and aromatic plants no longer climbed the sides of the defiles; they carpeted the ground and sent a sharp fragrance into the air. The passes would widen again more liberally into battlemented gorges from which great solitary boulders and peninsulas rose out of the sea of lavender. Here and there this fragrant sea seemed to have splashed up against the rock-face, for little grey bushes would cling for dear life to some cleft or cranny far up the heights; sometimes on the very summit. As one follows the road it seems as if the heavily overhanging crags must come crashing down on one's head. What prevents it, I fail to this day to understand.
QUARRY IN VALLEY BELOW LES BAUX.
By E. M. Synge.